Religious Terrorism in the Context of Cultural Relativism

Simna V

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.59109

Religious Terrorism in the Context of Cultural Relativism

Author(s)	Dr. Simna V
Country	India
Abstract	The matter of concern of this paper is how and to what extent, in a multicultural society, we can apply the canons of Cultural relativism. A pluralist society is destined to face empirical contradictions and conflicts. We have seen that a pluralist society or a multicultural society has to accommodate more than one culture, and in such societies, any one of them necessarily tends to dominate other culture(s). Each sub-unit of the given society believes that its culture is good and right and therefore superior to that of others. This self-asserted superiority of one or another cultural unit within a society prompts the creation of its ‘others’ which are treated by the former as inferior/primitive/uncivilized. Here the notion of Cultural Relativism becomes relevant and significant from a philosophical/ethical point of view. Cultural Relativism implies that values in terms of norms and practices in a certain culture are relative to that culture. As a concept, cultural relativism faces the allegation that by definition itself it means ‘anything goes’. This leads to the criticism that relativism justifies the ideology of terrorism. In order to examine this criticism, we have to analyze what Cultural Relativism does not mean rather than to say what it means because Cultural Relativism is one of the most misinterpreted concepts in the field of humanities and cultural studies.
Keywords	Terrorism, Ideology, Cultural Relativism
Field	Sociology > Philosophy / Psychology / Religion
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2025
Published On	2025-10-30
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.59109

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Religious Terrorism in the Context of Cultural Relativism

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